“But you have not confided in this promise; for the youth of Vienna, which feels the inspiring breath of this miraculous time, is impelled on the path of progress; and therefore the Austrian government, uncertain of itself and of your dispositions, took its old part of standing still to wait for events, in the hope of turning them to its own profit.

“In the midst of this it received the news of our glorious revolution, and it thought to have found in this the best way to escape from its embarrassment.  First it concealed that news; then made it known piecemeal, and disfigured by hypocrisy and hatred.  We were a handful of rebels thirsting for German blood.  We make a war of stilettos, we wish the destruction of all Germany.  But for us answers the admiration of all Italy, of all Europe, even the evidence of your own people whom we are constrained to hold prisoners or hostages, who will unanimously avow that we have shown heroic courage in the fight, heroic moderation in victory.

“Yes! we have risen as one man against the Austrian government, to become again a nation, to make common cause with our Italian brothers, and the arms which we have assumed for so great an object we shall not lay down till we have attained it.  Assailed by a brutal executor of brutal orders, we have combated in a just war; betrayed, a price set on our heads, wounded in the most vital parts, we have not transgressed the bounds of legitimate defence.  The murders, the depredations of the hostile band, irritated against us by most wicked arts, have excited our horror, but never a reprisal.  The soldier, his arms once laid down, was for us only an unfortunate.

“But behold how the Austrian government provokes you against us, and bids you come against us as a crusade!  A crusade!  The parody would be ludicrous if it were not so cruel.  A crusade against a people which, in the name of Christ, under a banner blessed by the Vicar of Christ, and revered by all the nations, fights to secure its indefeasible rights.

“Oh! if you form against us this crusade,—­we have already shown the world what a people can do to reconquer its liberty, its independence,—­we will show, also, what it can do to preserve them.  If, almost unarmed, we have put to flight an army inured to war,—­surely, brothers, that army wanted faith in the cause for which it fought,—­can we fear that our courage will grow faint after our triumph, and when aided by all our brothers of Italy?  Let the Austrian government send against us its threatened battalions, they will find in our breasts a barrier more insuperable than the Alps.  Everything will be a weapon to us; from every villa, from every field, from every hedge, will issue defenders of the national cause; women and children will fight like men; men will centuple their strength, their courage; and we will all perish amid the ruins of our city, before receiving foreign rule into this land which at last we call ours.